Numerical study on the Effect of Rectangular and Triangular Counter-Rotating Vortex Generators on the H-Rotor Wind Turbine Performance

Vortex generators (VGs) in the form of small fins are attached to the blade of the H-rotor wind turbine to improve the performance. Many studies provide the utilization VGs both experimentally and numerically. However, the investigation of the full scale of counter-rotating VGs in rotor blades is still rarely found. In the current study, two shapes of VGs were investigated to evaluate wind turbine performance. VGs in rectangular and triangular shapes were attached under the identical blade geometry of 375 mm of chord length and the blade attachment of 30% from the chord length. VGs have a similar height and length of 6.5 mm and 13 mm, respectively. The turbine was constructed with three blades that rotate under 1,650 mm of the rotor diameter and 1,000 mm of rotor height. The chordwise position (x/c) of the VGs was at 10%, 15%, 20%, and 25%. The computational fluid dynamics with the unsteady Reynolds Average Navier Stokes (URANS) model were employed. We found that VGs behave in different performances. The rectangular VGs had the maximum power coefficient (Cp) value at the x/c of 20%, while the triangular VGs had the maximum Cp value at the x/c of 25%. However, both VGs show the maximum Cp in the value of 0.467 with a 1.5 Tip Speed Ratio. To evaluate the performance improvement, the blade with VGs was compared with the blade without VGs. It was found that using the VGs improved the performance of the wind turbine by around 45.68% and 47.24%, respectively, for triangular and rectangular shapes. The flow field characteristics in terms of turbulent kinetic energy and flow velocity were also presented in this study to gain a better understanding of how the VGs work. The result revealed that the presence of the VGs significantly improves the performance of the turbine.